Die Boek van MormonBy John M. PontiusI was searching through my books in storage a few days ago andcame across a first edition of the Book of Mormon in Afrikaans. Iserved a mission in South African from 1971 to 1973. It was aninteresting and challenging experience.I attended the Stake Conference in Johannesburg on May 14, 1972when the new translation of the Book of Mormon into Afrikaans (DieBoek van Mormon) was presented. It was an electric moment. Peoplewept. Some had waited all of their lifetimes to read the Book ofMormon in Afrikaans. Many people had learned English for the solepurpose of reading this scripture. The Spirit was strong among us aswe rejoiced.Remembering back more than 50 years, I can still remember ProfessorFelix Mynhardt [not a member of our church] as he spoke of hisexperience in translating that sacred book. I will retell it as best I canrecall.Professor Mynhardt was invited to come to the stand and speak abouthis experience in translating the Book of Mormon. He recounted howhe had been given a gift of languages from God from his youth. Hesaid that he was fluent in many languages, including English,Afrikaans, Hebrew and Egyptian, as well as many others. He waspresently employed as a language professor. He said he had beenpraying that the Lord would give him some task, some divinelyimportant task, that would justify his having this gift of language fromGod.He said in about 1970 that he had visited with a group of Mormonleaders, who sought to commission him to translate the Book ofMormon from English into Afrikaans. He said that he knew of the Bookof Mormon from his religions studies, and his initial reaction was thathe did not want to be involved in translating it.However, that evening, as he prayed upon his knees, as was his habit,he said the Spirit of the Lord convicted him. The message wassomething on the order of, "You asked me for a great, divinely inspiredtask of translation, I sent it to you in the form of translating the Book ofMormon, and you declined." Professor Mynhardt said he could notsleep through the night because he knew that translating the Book ofMormon would get him into trouble with his university, which wasowned and operated by the Dutch Reformed Church. When morningcame he telephoned Elder Clark to inform him that he would begin thetranslation immediately.He stood at the pulpit and described the experience. He said, "I neverbegin translating a book at the beginning. Writing style usuallychanges through a book, and becomes more consistent toward themiddle. Accordingly, I opened to a random place in the middle of theBook of Mormon, and began translating." He said, "I was startled bythe obvious fact that the Book of Mormon was not authored in English.He said, "It became immediately apparent that what I was reading wasa translation into English from some other language. The sentencestructure was wrong for native English. The word choices were wrong,as were many phrases." He said, "How many times has an Englishmansaid or written, ‘And it came to pass?’" We all laughed, and knew hewas right, of course.He continued, "When I realized this, I knew that I had to find theoriginal language, and translate it back into the original language, or asimilar language to the original, and then proceed to translate it intoAfrikaans. He listed a half-dozen languages he tried, all of which didnot accommodate the strange sentence structure found in the Book ofMormon. He said, "I finally tried Egyptian, and to my complete surprise,I found that the Book of Mormon translated flawlessly into Egyptian,not modern, but ancient Egyptian. I found that some nouns weremissing from Egyptian, so I added Hebrew nouns where Egyptian didnot provide the word or phrase. I chose Hebrew because bothlanguages existed in the same place anciently.""I had no idea at that time why the Book of Mormon was once writtenin Egyptian, but I can tell you without any doubt, that this book was atone point written entirely in Egyptian." I heard him say this over andover. Then, he said, "Imagine my utter astonishment when I turned tochapter one, verse one and began my actual translation and came toverse two, where Nephi describes that he was writing in the languageof the Egyptians, with the learning of the Jews!"He said, "I knew by the second verse, that this was no ordinary book,that it was not the writings of Joseph Smith, but that it was of ancientorigin and was in fact scripture. I could have saved myself months ofwork if I had just begun at the beginning. Nobody but God, workingthrough a prophet of God, in this case Nephi, would have included astatement of the language he was writing in. Consider, how manydocuments written in English, include the phrase, "we are writing inEnglish!" It is unthinkable and absolute proof of the inspired origins ofthis book.He paused, then noted, "I am one of the few people in the world that isfluent in ancient Egyptian. I am perhaps the only person fluent inancient Egyptian who is also fluent in Afrikaans and English. And Iknow for a fact, that I am the only person alive who could havetranslated this book first into Egyptian, and then into Afrikaans. If yourchurch ever needs an Egyptian translation of the Book of Mormon, it issitting in my office as we speak." We all laughed.Professor Mynhardt spoke of many other things regarding thetranslation of this book, and then said, "I do not know what JosephSmith was before he translated this book, and I do not know what hewas afterward, but while he translated this book, he was a prophet ofGod! I know he was a prophet! I testify to you that he was a prophetwhile he brought forth this book! He could have been nothing else! Noperson in 1827 could have done what he did. The science did notexist. The knowledge of ancient Egyptian did not exist. The knowledgeof these ancient times and ancient peoples did not exist. The Book ofMormon is scripture. I hope you realize this."I will keep promoting this book as scripture for the remainder of my life– simply because it is scripture, and I know it.I haven’t studied your doctrine or your history since Joseph Smith. Theonly thing I know about the Mormon religion is that you have authentic,ancient scripture in the Book of Mormon, that your church was begunby a living and true prophet of God, and that all of the world shouldembrace the Book of Mormon as scripture. It simply can’t be denied."

There was a thread about this not too long ago. Someone linked to the guy's blog (where this was originally posted). The author retracted it, apparently events did not occur as he remembered them, or something like that. I wish I had a link to the original post, because there are some gems on that guy's site. He's completely delusional.

"Bishop Johannes P. Brummer of the Johannesburg Second Ward, one of those who shepherded this valuable and important translation, told of the divine guidance that made its publication possible. He had translated about a third of the Book of Mormon into Afrikaans, but it had been a long, tedious effort, and it was imperative that the translation be completed without further delay so that the building up of the Church in South Africa could progress with greater speed and with every possible advantage. But where could a person be found with the necessary academic excellence and sufficient spirituality to complete such a task?

One day an acquaintance of Bishop Brummer brought his friend, Felix Mynhardt, a language teacher from Pretoria, to meet him. The man not only had a consuming interest in everything related to the scriptures, but he also had been raised in a home with a spiritual atmosphere. His father, the Reverend C. F. Mynhardt, compiled the first concordance of the Afrikaans Bible.

Felix’s facility with languages was phenomenal. When he was a young boy he could read Latin text; at nine, he read Latin and Greek fluently; by sixteen, he had mastered English, Afrikaans, Aramaic, and Hebrew; then he took up other languages—German, French, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. Finally, he gained a reading skill in Chinese.

Bishop Brummer bore testimony of divine intervention in the translation: “I can tell you that I have no doubt about this that when Felix Mynhardt made his appearance in my office on a given day, it was not just a coincidence. He was sent to us by the Lord. This has been confirmed to me on many occasions since then. You might well ask the question whether a man of such academic preeminence and authority would have the necessary humility of spirit to enable him to do work of this nature.”

Felix Mynhardt, a nonmember, provides the answer to that question himself.

During a difficult period in the translation Felix said: “It’s as though darkness seems to settle on my mind when I get down to work so that I just cannot get the translation done. On some occasions I have in absolute despair gone down onto my knees and asked the Lord to help me. I have come to you today to tell you that I think you folks are just not praying for me.”

I wonder what edition of the BOM they gave to Mynhardt, because if it wasn't the original, then the thousands of changes since 1830 would make a reverse translation inaccurate anyway. I much prefer Richard Packham's "Joseph Smith's Language Problems" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_LBzEsTlbk

First off, I have found no other confirmation of even the existence of Mr. Mynhardt other than the Ensign article, which is good enough confirmation of his existence, but doesn't corroborate the story at all. Other than the Ensign article, the only other reference to Mr. Mynhardt that exists on the web is this single story told by a TBM.

It feels false, and here's the main reason why. What ever became of Mr. Mynhardt? If this story is true, then he most certainly would have become mormon. If he didn't, then there are some serious problems with the story. If he did, then we should have heard something about him. From his lack of appearance anywhere else, I tend to believe that he never became mormon, which leads me to believe that this story is mere sensationalism told after Mr. Mynhardt passed away and could no longer defend himself. However, I do believe that he existed, translated the Book of Mormon, and may have even spoken before a group of saints among which may have been the fellow who recounted the story. There's no way he said the things he was reported of saying, though.

The main problem I have with the whole thing is:Whatever happened to the sitting "Prophet, Seer, Revelator andTranslator" in this scenerio?

I'm wondering why the prophet at the time saw fit to contract the job out to unholy gentiles rather than keep it "in-house"--since translating is his JOB!!

If the sitting prophet felt he couldn't/wouldn't/shouldn't do the job, methinks the GA's should consider striking the words "Seer, Revelator and Translator" from the title.Wouldn't leaving the title as is be a form of false advertising?